Gather has recently been full of politicking on the topic of the 2008 Presidential race. Yet it is ironic that here in Virginia, we have an election coming on Tuesday, and nobody much cares.

The off-year election coming two days from now will involve local and state government representatives. In some ways, these elected officials have more to do with our daily lives than the federal government. They decide complex issues involving development, transportation, and taxation. In Virginia we have around 6 million adults over the age of 18. Out of that number we have around 4.4 million registered voters. Out of those registered voters, we have around 1.5 million people who are expected to vote on Tuesday. That is roughly half the number who are expected to show up 1n 2008 to elect our next President.

This is the greatest democracy on our planet, and we are going to get 25% of the eligible citizenry to the polls? This in a nation where women were jailed in the 1910s for campaigning for voting rights, and African American activists were murdered for campaigning for voting rights in the 1960s. Maybe I should move to Myanmar, where people actually care about participating in the process of building their future, despite the guns pointed at them.